ABSTRACT
The Universidad de los Andes has, since 2000, owned an APT facility as the main component of the laboratory of physical modeling of pavements.The firstAPT apparatus used at LosAndesUniversitywas an outdoor circular machine developed at the end of the 1990’s (Caicedo and Perez, 2000; Balay and Mateos, 2008). Each of the two rolling modules included an electrical motor (22 kW) contributing to maximum speed of 40 km/h. The mean radius of rotation of the wheels was 11m and the apparatus could accommodate simulated transverse wandering up to 3m in width. The beam was supported by a hydraulic jack to continuously control the load applied by the wheels to the pavement structure. The maximum load applied was 65 kN on each dual-wheel. This first version of the facility was able to apply up to 200,000 loading cycles per week to the test track, which was 35m long and 4m wide. This apparatus was the first APT facility operating in Colombia.
